ANTIDORON – The EMST Collection

ANTIDORON

Eirene Efstathiou

The exhibition at the Fridericianum marks the first time the collection of Greece’s National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) is presented in Germany, through a double displacement that renders EMST’s home, the renovated building of the former Fix brewery in Athens, one of the main venues of documenta 14, and the Fridericianum, traditionally the centerpiece of a documenta exhibition, the temporary home of EMST’s collection. With this collaboration, documenta 14 and EMST strengthen each other’s public engagement, captured in documenta 14’s working title Learning from Athensas well as in the museum’s new annual exhibition series, entitled “EMST in the World.”

EMST began creating its collection in 2000. Its holdings now include more than 1,100 works by Greek and international artists from the 1960s onward. The exhibition at the Fridericianum is an adapted version of the museological study of the EMST collection by the director Katerina Koskina to be inaugurated in Athens in 2017, with the curatorial assistance of Tina Pandi and Stamatis Schizakis, the architectural design of Iro Nikolakea, and the support of all the EMST staff. The artworks that travel to Kassel comment on the complex reality in Greece today and highlight the parallel and international journeys of pioneering Greek artists.